The Bronx, NY - The Bronx Museum of the Arts hosts Making It Together: Women’s Collaborative Art and Community.  On view through August 4, the exhibition explores an important chapter in recent history when women artists, inspired by the 1970s Feminist Movement, worked collectively in new ways to engage communities and address social issues. “Artist teams and groups have become an increasingly fashionable mode in recent years,” says guest curator critic Carey Lovelace. “Feminist Art laid the groundwork for this, challenging ideas about authorship, particularly the myth of the solo male artist.”  
 
The movement pioneered new approaches to group identity through various means such as collaborative performances, women’s co-ops, “leaderless” institutions and inclusive artworks engaging communities.  Set to coincide with WACK!  Art and the Feminist Revolution, which opens at P.S.1 in February 2008, the exhibition will feature key performances and visual-arts collectives, showcasing innovative examples of activist art created in the 1970s and early 1980s through video and photo documentation as well as various ephemera.
 
“Today,” remarks Lovelace, “artists are seeking ways to make potent political statements.  The women in this exhibition created art works that truly affected the world.”  
 
Among those showcased are Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz, whose landmark, multi-part event Three Weeks in May (1977), recreated into a large-scale installation, combining art-related performances and public workshops, was at the forefront of the movement against sexual violence.  Spiderwoman Theatre (1975), a Native American collective, communicates native tradition and feminist issues through “storyweaving.” Other groups represented include the Guerilla Girls, whose satiric posters challenged art-world gender and racial politics, the Heresies collective, who deployed innovative Feminist approaches to publishing to produce a legendary journal, and Judy Baca’s Great Wall of Los Angeles, the world’s largest mural, which employed “at risk” youth to research, visually imagine, and paint the “hidden histories” of the California Southland.   
 
A newsprint publication will accompany the exhibition, featuring an essay by Lovelace, co-president emeritus of the U.S. Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, who has written essays on topics related to feminist art for Art in America, Artforum, ARTnews, Art on Paper and many other publications.  Making It Together marks Lovelace’s debut as a curator.
 
In addition, as a counterpart to Making It Together, The Bronx Museum will also feature Highlights of the Permanent Collection: Women Artists, a special exhibition from its permanent collection highlighting women artists whose works comment on social and political situations. Artists include Tania Bruguera, Ana Mendieta, Adrian Piper, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Graciela Sacco, Gary Simmons and Rachel Lachowicz, and Carrie Mae Weems.
 
Concurrent Exhibition : Teen Council Presents: Jamel Shabazz
On view in the North Wing through August 4, 2008
The Bronx Museum’s Teen Council class of 2007-2008 organizes a small exhibition of photographs by Jamel Shabazz based on the theme of community. During their tenure, the Teen Council conducted an interview with Shabazz for the education department’s DVD series. The teens worked in collaboration with Shabazz and assistant curator Erin Riley-Lopez to put the exhibition together.
 
The Bronx Museum of the Arts
The flagship cultural institution of The Bronx, founded in 1971, The Bronx Museum of the Arts focuses on 20th-century and contemporary art, while serving the culturally diverse populations of The Bronx and the greater New York metropolitan area. The museum’s home on the Grand Concourse is a distinctive contemporary landmark designed by the internationally-renowned firm Arquitectonica.
 
The Bronx Museum of the Arts maintains a permanent collection of 20th and 21st-century works by artists of African, Asian, and Latin American ancestry.  Additionally, the Museum collects works by artists for whom The Bronx has been critical to their artistic practice and development. The Museum’s educational offerings spring from these central programs with outreach to children and families as well as adult audiences. For more information please visit www.bronxmuseum.org